Wednesday, 28 August 2013

Long Overdue FO Post #2

Mods: I made it bigger. Even the biggest size offered by the pattern would not have been big enough for me (let us not forget that inspiring editorial when Vogue explained they didn't make all their patterns available in bigger sizes because "they know what looks best on bigger women" *eyeroll*) so I added 10% to the stitch count on the two back panels and prepared myself to knit a third panel for the centre if it still wasn't big enough, but it was.
I also knitted it about 4 rows shorter, because I was afraid I would run out of yarn. I probably didn't need to do this and if I wasn't quite so lazy I would unpick my lovely i-cord bind off and lengthen it a little, but it's OK as it is.

Hur hur. Mr Z caught me unawares with this one, but it made us laugh.

This top had a very interesting construction. As you can see from my post about it here, you start by knitting the front portion in a spiral from the centre out, and then fill in the gaps through a combination of picking up and knitting down, and knitting panels. At least twice I was convinced the instructions must be wrong because it was completely counter-intuitive but, no, it worked.

I even managed to crochet the elastic in at the back, although this was time consuming and made my hands hurt. I didn't crochet around the front edge as I couldn't really appreciate what this would add and, yknow, crochet is a Dark Art and I didn't want to do too much of it. And I wasn't sure if I had enough yarn left.

When I was looking at FOs on Ravelry I really wanted a close up of the underarm part, because that was the bit I struggled with the most - I was unclear about how to stitch the straps to their opposite panel and I felt the instructions weren't particularly enlightening. So, here is my close up of that part, just in case there are any other knitters in the same boat.

I didn't quite get it right - the two underarm pieces are supposed to join above the side seam, but because I misunderstood the instruction when I was knitting the little extension panels, they joined in a different place to what I expected. I thought they'd sit on top of one another, to create a continuous line, but they sat against each other to form a point.

The yarn is lovely. It was like knitting with twine to begin with, of course, but it softened up considerably just in the handling and now it has been washed twice (in the machine) it is even softer. The colour has remained true, too. It's quite heavy off, but really comfortable to wear and especially good when it's hot. The cone was 400g and I had a bit left over; Texere are quite vague with how much yardage 400g actually equates to, saying that it varies according to the colourway. There is no doubt, though, that two cones would easily make a blousy plus-sized summer top with sleeves, which makes it an extreme bargain in my book, particularly since they're currently offering 4 cones for £24.